


Signing the Papers

by LavenderValerian



Category: Frasier (TV)
Genre: F/M, but I decided Mel needed defending, holla if you hear me, this is an old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26051671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LavenderValerian/pseuds/LavenderValerian
Summary: "Things like this happen every day. Husbands have affairs, wives find out, marriages are dissolved. Divorce papers are filed.Nothing unusual about this at all."Mel's thoughts on signing the divorce papers.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Signing the Papers

ATTORNEY OR PARTY WITHOUT ATTORNEY  
Theodore Fischer  
Baker, Fischer, Colt & Epstein, P.C.  
2025 Millennium Park East, Suite 1120  
Seattle, WA  
Attorney for: Melinda Karnofsky

SUPERIOR COURT OF WASHINGTON, COUNTY OF SEATTLE  
Street address: 135 Dudley Street  
Mailing address: Same  
City: Seattle, WA

MARRIAGE OF  
Petitioner: Melinda Karnofsky  
Respondent: Niles Crane

PETITION FOR  
X Dissolution of Marriage  
Legal Separation  
Nullity of Marriage

  
* * *

Call me crazy, but I've enjoyed filling out the divorce papers. There's something soothing about the series of check-boxes, the pages and pages of dry legal jargon. There is a way to categorize this. Things like this happen every day. Husbands have affairs, wives find out, marriages are dissolved. Divorce papers are filed.

Nothing unusual about this at all.

The problem, though, is the signature. I've put Xes in all the correct boxes; I've read, carefully and thoroughly, all the legal jargon. I've constructed a divorce which is just unfair enough to Niles to make it clear who is in the driver's seat here. Not enough to destroy him financially; that would make me look bad, at least to an extent. If people knew the whole story… but then people will never know. In the eyes of the world, or at any rate in the eyes of our little world, Niles is a boor, but a harmless one — a joke, really, rather than a villain. I think I want it to stay that way. I don't really want people to be aware of the biggest misjudgment I've ever made in my life.

So. The boxes are checked, the papers are read, the agreement is set (because there isn't a chance in hell Niles will refuse to sign these.) All that remains is for me to sign them. Sign and file.

So why can't I manage it?

Maybe it's just that this has all happened so suddenly. That lovely little showdown at Frasier's was just five days ago, and of course this all came crashing down around my ears just two months ago. That isn't a long time, really. The whole experience has been a whirlwind, actually. Six months from first date to marriage, three days from marriage to separation. Two months from separation to divorce. Eight months total.

  
Insignificant, really.

And I still can't make myself sign these damn papers. I don't know what my problem is. When Eliot and I split I didn't have any problem with this part. Of course, by that point with Eliot I just wanted out, I couldn't have been happier to make that final. It's more difficult with Niles…

As much as I might wish it, I am not completely over him.

I can't believe I admitted that.

Oh, I suppose it might be asking too much of myself, in a way, expecting myself to have fallen completely out of — all right, out of love, I said it. Expecting myself to have fallen completely out of love with Niles the moment he told me he and that little whore were going to be shacking up together as soon as I'd move aside. Oh, not that he'd ever put it that bluntly. I do believe that he felt bad about that, in the moment. Certainly he didn't have an easy time getting the words out. At first I wanted to shake him, until I realized where he was going with it, what he was trying to say. That was when I went numb. On one level I just kept thinking he had to be joking, but really, I knew from the moment I understood what he was telling me that it was no joke. It was too perfect. I think my first clear thought, actually, just before I started screaming, was "Ah, yes. This is why I don't let myself trust men."

Why did I ever reverse that policy with Niles, anyway? What was I thinking? I was doing fine without him, things were fine as they were. I learned my lesson the hard way, forgiving Eliot that first affair, not even catching wise to the second one till the third one became apparent. I learned my lesson, or so I thought, and I moved cross-country to start a new life on my own terms. That's what makes this so hard, that I did start afresh. Managed to build, and with no help from anyone else, a successful practice, a circle of successful, well-to-do friends; managed to build a new life for myself and by myself. Then I threw it all away on Niles. And for no better motive, at first, than that I was flattered by his could-it-be-any-more-obvious infatuation with me. Generally, when I turn a man down by offering him plastic surgery, things end there. Niles came back three times, spent a not-inconsiderable amount of money just to spend forty-five minutes each time in my company. I was flattered. So when he finally screwed up the nerve to talk over me and ask for a date, I accepted. And thus it began. Thus I landed here, with my pen poised at the beginning of the signature line, incapable of signing my damn name and putting an end to all of this.

Flattery is such a poor excuse for having let this happen, though. I mean, that's nothing new to me. Even when I split with Eliot and I made up my mind that men weren't worth trusting, I never felt that should interfere with a healthy sex life. I've had plenty of suitors, and I've slept with a number of them, and I've enjoyed it, and it's all been fine and it's all stayed on my terms. Most of the time I've informed them quite frankly at the outset that our relationship was to stay on the sexual level, that it wasn't to go any further than that. So the fact that Niles was clearly interested in more than sex should have set off warning bells right away for me. It violated all the parameters I'd set up for myself.

I suppose I just got careless, that's all. It's been ten years since Eliot and I split and I suppose I lost track of things. Certainly Niles bears next to no resemblance to Eliot — well, apart from the fact of his cheating on me, and I caught wise to that just a little too late in both cases. Of course, Niles claims he hasn't yet slept with Daphne, that he couldn't do that to me. I don't know what he thinks the difference is. Either way I've lost him. Does he think it will hurt less if he refrains from fucking her till the divorce goes through the courts?

There's what this all comes down to, there's what I want to say — there's the one thing I have no answer for. I can arrange the perfect divorce and carefully construct the public story of what happened and say all the right things and do all the right things. But it hurts. Oh, God, it hurts. Nothing I say or do seems to change that. And there's no one I can tell, there's no one I can talk to. Niles is the only person I've ever been able to talk to, really talk to. In my whole life there's never been anyone who knew me so completely. Eliot didn't even come close. He never wanted that. I suppose a successful stockbroker has by nature no real desire to delve into his partner's soul; the bright face at the social function's sufficient for that sort of relationship. I should have known, dating a psychiatrist, what I was letting myself in for. But I didn't. I had no idea, going to that first opera with him (I will never again be able to see or hear any portion of _La Boheme_ for the rest of my life), how things were going to turn out. A harmless date, I thought, a free ticket to the opera. How was I to know I'd end up falling for him? How was I to know he'd pull me in that way, so gently I wouldn't even notice it happening till it was too late?

We didn't even sleep together till we'd been dating for three months. Something of a record for me in recent years, but then, as I said before, all my relationships between Eliot and Niles had been strictly about sex, nothing more. It worked so well that way, or so I thought. Some short pretense of a date, an energetic lovemaking session, and then the guy, whoever he was, would be on his way before the clock read midnight and I'd fall asleep perfectly content. Niles was the first to stay over, too. Again, by my choice. I didn't kick him out. And then, once we were finished and I was lying in his arms, our heartbeats gradually slowing to normal, we began talking. I think, in looking back on it, that that was where the trouble really began; or, rather, that that was when it became irreversible. I was already falling for him by then, certainly, but the biggest problem — the thing I can't let go of now, when I need to be able to let go of it — is that I let him in. I shared so much with him. And I thought he shared so much with me. Maybe that's when things crossed over from infatuation to the beginnings of love, I don't know. It's the first time I told him I loved him. And he told me he loved me too, damn it, he said it!

Well, obviously he was lying. I wish I could say I was. Lord knows I've tried. Tried to trivialize what I felt, what I'm feeling now. But it doesn't work. He knows what he meant to me. He knows that I let him into my life where I haven't let anyone else, ever. All the things I told him, all the parts of my life I've spend so many years pretending never happened. It was amusing and yet so touching at the same time, the way he used to watch what I ate and encourage me to order extra desserts, after I told him I'd been anorexic. I also told him (this was another postcoital conversation) that there is no one else on earth besides my parents and about twenty other unfortunate inmates of McLean twenty years ago who knows about that. I tried to justify the telling, the next morning, by arguing to myself that, having been married to Maris, surely the man knows a thing or two about anorexia. But that wasn't it, and I'll admit it now if it kills me. I trusted him. I wanted to talk to him about it. And I wanted him to know, because I loved him. I thought he had the right to know. Because I loved him.

I wonder what would happen if I started starving myself again now? I'm sure it wouldn't be enough to convince him to leave Daphne, but there's no doubt that it would be extremely effective as emotional blackmail. I'd probably be able to make him miserable quite easily.

No. No, no, no. No.

I have to stop thinking like that. In fact, I have to stop thinking, period. The more I think about this the worse it gets. I just can't deal with this. I don't have any idea how to deal with this. There's something you're not going to find in the self-help section of your average Barnes and Noble: _How to Cope When the Man You Love Leaves You Three Days After Your Wedding to Slum with a British Maid_ _._ It isn't funny, either.

I wish I could talk to him just one more time. Really talk to him. Forget with the bitterness, the hurt, the resentment — forget the last two months. Tell him, just once, that I wasn't lying when I said I loved him. And ask him if he was lying. Ask him how this could happen. Ask him how he could do this to me, ask him —

Please, no!

There, I've had my cry out and I feel better. I swear to God that that is the last time I will ever cry over him.

These papers still need to be signed. Because there's nothing I can do about this, is there? After a lifetime of managing my life down to the smallest detail, I have to accept that. There is nothing I can do.

SIGNATURE OF PETITIONER  
_Melinda Karnofsky_

That looks nice and neat. Ready to be filed. Of course, he has to sign it too before that can happen. I imagine Daphne will look over his shoulder as he does that, and then they'll both whoop for joy, and kiss, and head for the bedroom, and consummate their relationship. Assuming he was telling me the truth when he said they hadn't. Oh, they'll be positively radiant. Like as not Frasier will take the family out for a celebratory dinner. And I'll be forgotten. Well, fine. I'd rather be forgotten than remembered as what I've been for the past few months.

I think I'll probably move again soon. It won't be as hard as one might think. Of course I'm well-established in my field here, but I can rebuild a practice elsewhere, I have no qualms on that score. As for my "friends", such as they are — I've no qualms about leaving them, either. A circle of people who know me on the most superficial level, people who buy into that image I project day in and day out. I never realized how shallow my life was until Niles came into it, until Niles forced his way in deeper. And I don't know what to do about it. God knows I'll never be able to trust any man again. It's not a question of will this time, the way it was after Eliot. I can't do it. Eliot never hurt me this way. I can't open myself up to this ever again. I'm not sure how I'm going to get through it this time.

But I will. I'm not dropping anchor here. I'm not letting Niles win. I will rebound, and I will be stronger for it. I don't know how the hell I'm going to do that, but I will. If I managed to learn to eat twenty years ago I can manage to learn to live without Niles now.

There. The papers are in a nice crisp manila envelope and the envelope is addressed to Niles. I'm going to drop it in the mailbox now. And after that I think I'm going to call Evan Lightman. He's been hovering ever since Niles and I split; at first I thought he was something of a vulture, but right now I think I could use a warm body tonight. So long as he's gone by midnight.

So that's it. I'll mail the papers, I'll squeeze in a nice unsentimental fuck with Evan tonight and tomorrow I'll start trying to figure out where I'm going to move. And it will all be fine.

Just fine.


End file.
